Turning over Stones

"Alright, off to the stocks with this lot then!" A garish knight captain smacked Banthus on the back as the town guard escorted a row of bandits to Elder castle. Stark shadows falling across his face from the guards' torches as Banthus snarled, spit, and struggled against the chains on his hands and legs.

"Hey! Lay off! We're all still bleedin' all over! You tryin' to kill us?"

The guards glanced over the weary, ragged bandits. Blood wasn't so prominent on their skin and clothes as were ash and scorch marks. The knight captain grabbed the nearest bandit's jaw and tilted her head up and to the side, assessing the extent of her injuries.

"Fine, see that they get patched up enough to make it through the night. It'd be a hazard to public health if we let them rot right in Lord Wally's courtyard." At his signal, the town guard dragged Banthus and his underlings off. "Now how the hell did they get so mangled and burnt..."

Standing nearby, Aisha forced a smile and laughed awkwardly. "Aha... well, they tried to escape a few times, but then they kept running into these forest fires..." Next to her, Rena and Elsword confirmed her testimony with a serious nod.

"Very well then... thank you for your service to our kingdom, and enjoy your stay in Elder. Good evening to you." The knight captain tipped his helmet and headed off to the castle, leaving Rena, Aisha, and Elsword to address the matter of sleep. Save for the hour Elsword lay unconscious in the mountains, none of them had managed more than four hours rest in the past two days and they were all anxious to find a soft bed for the night. The first two inns they tried turned out to be full up and out of food for the night, occupied by villagers from the south who fled after the El was taken. Their next stop proved more accommodating, though everyone but the barkeep had long since gone off to bed. Struggling to stay awake herself, the barkeep reached onto the wall behind her and handed Rena the key to the only open room.

"You can pay in the morning, after breakfast. It's got just two beds, is that alright?"

Rena nodded and smiled wearily. "Yeah, that'll be fine." She turned and led the way upstairs, pausing to corral a half-conscious Elsword and catching Aisha as she tripped on the top step. Once inside, Elsword immediately headed over to the far end of the room and started shedding his armor and travel clothes. Aisha immediately recoiled in shock.

"Elsword, what are you doing! Don't just start stripping in front of a lady!"

Blinking and rubbing his eyes, Elsword took his hands off of his belt and looked up through his heavy eyelids. "Oh, right... sorry Rena..."

Before Aisha could storm over to the other side of the room and hurl Elsword through a closed window, Rena grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backward for a sudden embrace.

"Ai~sha." She hummed as she held her captive, "Wanna share a bed? Otherwise, one of us will have to sleep on the floor."

Aisha blushed indignantly. The shock of sudden contact was enough to calm her down and though she was still annoyed, she had long sense spent any energy she might use to argue. "I guess so..."

"Good." Rena released her and walked around to the middle of the room, pulling a warped wooden screen out and separating the two halves of the room. "We should get as much sleep as we can, since we've got to get up early tomorrow."

From the other side of the screen, Elsword mumbled a hasty "G'night." and turned in as Aisha and Rena removed their travel gear. Climbing into bed, they all settled into the comfort of warm blankets and the calm of the slumbering city, quickly falling into a restful sleep.

Light poured in through the slotted blinds of the window above Elsword's bed, dancing over rumpled sheets and peering over the low screen that divided the room until it finally fell across Rena's brow. She tossed her head once and then opened her eyes, stretching her arms overhead as she beamed back at the sun. Beside her lay a twisted up pillow and a mess of ruffled sheets, their previous tenant already gone. Hopping out of bed, Rena peeked around the room divider and saw Elsword's bed in a similar condition.

"I was the last one to wake up?" She sunk to the floor, her bright smile fading. "How could that happen? And they didn't even wake me up?" Sighing, she mourned the loss of the opportunities to tease Elsword and Aisha while they slept and dressed herself for breakfast. As she entered the dining hall, she couldn't help but laugh and quickly covered her mouth. Sitting on opposite sides of a small square table, Aisha and Elsword furiously devoured huge plates of potatoes covered in goat's cheese, fried eggs, and warm buttered bread, all the while avoiding eye contact with one another. Rena rounded the bottom of the staircase and headed over, putting in an order for a salad and toast on the way. Gathering up her food, she headed over to her comrades, both of whom were still waging a fierce battle against potatoes and eggs.

"Good Morning." Rena sat down and glanced at her company. Aisha scooped up a mouthful of potatoes and topped it off with a hunk of warm bread, swallowing and washing it all down with cold milk. She turned to Rena and wiped her mouth, smiling,

"Good Mornim-" Aisha took another gulp and finished off the rest of the food in her mouth. "Good Morning. Did you sleep okay?"

"Yup. What about you two?"

Elsword downed half his glass of ice water and polished off the last of his bread. "Yeah, but I woke up hungry..." He looked as though he had another thought to contribute, but his fork moved half an egg to his mouth and he quickly lost interest in talking. Aisha, too, had returned to her meal and was already nearly finished with her previously daunting pile of potatoes. Amused, Rena left them to their food and started in on her own while making note of their strikingly similar eating habits. After another half serving for everyone, Rena paid the innkeeper and they all gathered their things and headed out into the town square.

The air was crisp and frigid, frosting windows and freezing the ground. Donning their heavy cloaks, Elsword, Aisha, and Rena headed to the market where they split up, asking every merchant they could find about the El, the bandits, and anything else that might help in their search. Despite capturing Banthus and a handful of his underlings, they had learned very little other than that they had spent the evening fighting, defeating, and escorting the most uncooperative and secretive band of criminals in the kingdom. Not only were they unable to find out where the El had been taken, they were denied any reason or explanation as to why the thieves would have wanted to take it in the first place. With the light of Ruben's El vanishing amid the light of Elder's much larger crystal, they had no way of even knowing which direction it was taken.

Scouring the marketplace for an open vendor, Elsword milled about the empty stalls and locked storefronts until the heavy click of a key turning drew him to the door of a jeweler's shop. Peeking outside into the cold, the proprietress shivered and clutched her shoulders.

"Are you open now?" Elsword stood back from the door as his breath clouded the frozen air.

"Oh, yes, of course! Come on in." Holding the door open, the owner motioned him inside and they retreated from the brisk market square. Inside, rows of slowly spinning pendants hung from long chains reaching up into the ceiling and rings decorated the polished knots of small stumps and saplings. Metals glistened and stone shined faintly in the firelight as the shop's owner sized Elsword up.

"Well! We've never had anyone this young in to buy a wedding ring." She smirked as she stepped behind the counter.

"I'm not-!" Realizing he was just being teased, Elsword calmed himself and tried to ignore the insinuation. "I'm not here for jewelry."

"Oh?" The proprietress tossed a dry log onto a roaring fireplace in the center of the shop and it crackled and hissed. "Then how can I help you, young man?"

Elsword thought for a moment. "Has there been anything weird happening lately? Like, somebody moving something really big through town late last night?"

"I don't... think so..." She paused and pondered. "The only really big stuff you see being moved around here are all of Lord Wally's statues. He must really think he's being generous by letting us stare at his giant marble bald spot all day." She pointed out through a side window to a towering statue of a aging man with his arms outstretched and his eyes raised to the horizon. On his way through town, Elsword had noticed a half dozen of these statues, all of different sizes and all contorted into a different pose.

"Geh. How many of these things have they built for this guy?"

The owner chuckled lightly. "Oh, no, they weren't built for him... Lord Wally commissioned them himself."

Elsword's mouth turned down in disgust and he turned away from the window. "That's the stupidest, ugliest thing I've ever seen."

Bursting into laughter, the owner nodded in agreement. "It really is, but most people don't mind it too much. Lord Wally has been pretty good to us lately, despite all the problems he's caused us in the past. He's dropped our taxes to nothing and forgiven all debts to his estate, and we're all doing really well because of it."

Elsword looked up at her, confused. "What? Why? How's he get all the money for these stupid statues if he isn't taking it from the people in town?"

The shop owner shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. Maybe he carves all of them himself. It's hard to say what goes on in the castle since only his knights are allowed inside... Now..." She leaned over the counter and brought herself down to Elsword's eye level, "Tell me, why are you so interested in all this, and what's it got to do with big things getting moved around at night?"

Down an alley and up the road a hundred yards, Aisha shielded her face from the heat of an open forge as a blacksmith pounded out a pair of shears.

"Eh? What'd you say?" He cocked his head to the side, straining to hear Aisha over the growling fire behind him.

"Has there been any change in the El around the city lately!" As she shouted, a spark flew up onto her collar and she frantically swatted it away.

Striking in between their sentences, the blacksmith hammered out the flat of the shears before responding. "Hmm... Like what?"

Aisha opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by the rhythmic impact of hammer and anvil. She waited for an opening and rushed to fit all of her words into the brief silence. "Has the boundary of light from the El around town gotten any bigger or changed shape or has there been a lot of El passing through here in the last day or so?"

"I can't say that-" Iron pounded against steel, "I really know what you're gettin' at."

Aisha braced herself. "Has any more-" A shrill echo rang through her ears as hammer and anvil met again. "Has any more of the air around town suddenly become breathable?"

"Ah..." The smith put down his hammer and quenched the red hot shears in the reservoir next to him. "Yeah, actually. Don't know if it's what you're talkin' about or anything, but the farrier that lives just outside of town with all his horses came in before you this morning, said he suddenly had another acre of grazing land open for whenever spring got here."

Aisha stopped to think, confused about what she'd just heard. "So, it wasn't moving or anything? There was just suddenly more El all around?"

"Yep. That's what I heard anyway..." He turned and fed the fire with a few breaths from his bellows. "Now, I answered your questions little lady. Are you gonna buy these scissors or not?"

Smiling awkwardly, Aisha dug into her coin pouch and handed over a small stack of copper, walking off into the market and regretting her promise to buy something in exchange for information. Wrapping her new, slightly warm shears in cloth and placing them at the bottom of her pack, she headed over the fountain at the center of the market square where Elsword was already waiting.

"Hi there, excuse me... is anyone in yet?" Rena poked her head inside a large oak door and searched for a shopkeeper. The clattering of silverware rang out from a back room and soon a haggard voice was calling out to her.

"Yes, yes! Just a moment..." A balding man emerged from the depths of the shop and greeted Rena with a bow and a warm smile. "Good morning. I'm Hoffman, pleased to meet you... what can I do for you today?"

"You're the head of the Merchant's association, right?" Rena stepped inside and shut the door behind her, brushing the cold from her arms. "The alchemist on the west side of the square told me that you'd be able to help me out. The El stone that was supporting all the villages in the southern forest was stolen four days ago, and we lost track of it near Elder."

Hoffman nodded and his eyes sank. "Yes... I've heard about that from dozens of refugees now. Tell me, what of Ruben village? I've heard no word from them and I thought chief Hagus would be the first to contact me..."

"They're all safe, so far. We lost seven when the El was taken, but everyone there is surviving, for now. Chief Hagus sent us out to find the El, but so far we've only seen traces of it from a distance."

"Ah... good..." Hoffman sighed and relaxed as though a boulder were just lifted from his back. "And when you say 'us', you mean that the knights training in Ruben have all come with you to retrieve the El?"

Rena shook her head. "No... there's only three of us here in Elder, and most of the dead were those out training when the El was taken."

Hoffman gave another heavy sigh. "I see... Well, I'll tell you everything I can, but if you have been following the El then I doubt it's anything you don't already know. A merchant making her way into town late last evening claimed that there was a great concentration of El outside of town and all around the road, so it seems that Ruben's El came close to the city or went through it... but no one saw anything of the sort throughout the night. Aside from that and the reports from refugees, I've heard nothing at all."

Confused, Rena probed the matter further. "What do you mean? Have the other merchants been keeping quiet for some reason?"

"Oh, no, no that's not what I meant, although none of us in town have seen or heard anything useful in the first place. No, I was referring to Lord Wally's castle. The castle usually puts in a variety of orders to dozens of different merchants each week and I broker most of those transactions, but ever since Wally abolished our taxes, there's been nothing ordered, not even food or oil for the lamps. We simply can't get word through to the castle, the knights all turn us away without explanation."

"He... he isn't collecting taxes?" Rena pondered the implications and nodded to herself. "That sounds admirable. We don't really have any sort of taxes where I come from, though we do all have to pitch in to fix the roads and walls and things like that."

Hoffman laughed wryly. "Oh, if only it were that simple. Lord Wally isn't really a generous soul, he's just desperate. Around half a year ago, there was talk of a coup and many of the townsfolk were preparing to storm the castle and throw him off the highest cliff we could find. That's when he abolished the tax on imported goods and all the other taxes followed soon after. Everyone settled down for a while, but only a few of us really think that he's turned over a new leaf."

Rena brushed her cloak aside and folded her arms. "Why is Lord Wally so unpopular?"

"Well..." Hoffman clasped his hands together. " I could list a hundred reasons, all of which are merely straws on the camel's back, but there was one incident that stood out. You see, lately, Lord Wally has been obsessed with nasod technology. He's even gotten his hands on a few and paraded them around town."

"Actual nasod?" Rena blinked. "He has actual nasod?"

"Well, I don't know if they're the sort I heard about in stories as a kid, but they're huge mechanical beasts that walk and move all on their own. I'm not sure what they are inside, but they're definitely dangerous." Looking around, he motioned for Rena to follow him into the back of the shop, a tiny room with a table and a stove. He poured a cup of hot tea and offered it to Rena before continuing. "The incident I was talking about, it was when Wally's nasod were on display in the middle of town. A few children ran up and started playing with them and the machines suddenly attacked. One girl got her leg broken and several others were badly bruised, but the worst of it was when their parents stepped up to fight back. Lord Wally had them arrested and thrown in prison for nearly a month. He even shouted at the children for damaging the 'future of the kingdom'. After that, not many people were willing to put up with all the small problems anymore."

Rena sipped the warm tea and turned over Hoffman's stories in her mind. While the city's leadership was troubling, hearing about Lord Wally's eccentricities weren't helping her find the El. She waited in silence for a moment and then returned to the topic that brought her here. "What about ships and caravans? Have you heard of any getting ready for long journeys or carrying heavy cargo?"

"No, I don't think..." Hoffman scratched his head and then pulled a ledger off of his wall. "No, no one's stocked up enough for anything big. The largest we have out of this town in the winter are a few small skiffs out for fishing, and the lot of them together could barely support ten men, let alone an El crystal as large as the one you're looking for."

Closing her eyes and finishing off her tea, Rena nodded to Hoffman and returned her cup. "Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything else."

"Of course. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, but if we knew where the El was, I'm sure we'd have a small battalion of refugees ready to take it back."

Rena smiled and waved on her way out, leaving Hoffman's weary eyes and heavy sigh in the warmth of his empty shop. She headed back to the center of the market square where she spotted Elsword and Aisha bickering once again. As she made her way toward them, a subtle sense of dread fell over her. Standing in the biting winter breeze, she suddenly realized that recovering the El might be more dangerous and more difficult than they ever expected. Collecting herself, she silenced her doubts and put on a warm smile before returning to her companions.